Three engineers who operated southeast Queensland’s biggest dam at the height of the 2011 flood face potential criminal charges, after an inquiry called on the Crime and Misconduct Commission to examine the accuracy of their post-flood reports and testimony.

The long-awaited report of the $15 million flood inquiry, handed to Premier Anna Bligh today, says the commission of inquiry has found non-compliance with the manual under which Wivenhoe Dam was supposed to be operated ahead of the January 2011 flood that swamped Brisbane and Ipswich.

In no case did the document prepared give any hint that it was a reconstruction rather than the product of memory or contemporary record.

Ms Bligh has vowed, if re-elected, to implement the report "in its entirety, lock stock and barrel", noting 136 of the 177 recommendations related to the state government.

Maurice Blackburn Lawyers is considering a class action on behalf of flood-affected residents, saying it will be the "largest'' of its kind in Australia if it proceeds.

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"It's clear that at least some of this disaster was man made,'' firm partner Rod Hodgson said.

Ms Bligh said the finding about a breach of the dam manual did open the potential for legal action against Seqwater but it did not of itself establish legal liability.

"Seqwater has its own commercial insurance and it will be through their insurance that they work through any claims against them," she said.

Ms Bligh said Seqwater would be required to treat claimants fairly and "to respond to any claim as a model litigant", meaning mediation should be tried before the matter ended up in court.

LNP leader Campbell Newman welcomed the report and he did not think it cleared the state government of any blame for mismanagement of the dam during last year's floods.

If Seqwater had a case to answer over the management of the Wivenhoe Dam during the floods, then the state government had one to answer as well, he said.

The report has also been welcomed by the Local Government Association of Queensland, Insurance Council of Australia and Bureau of Meteorology, with the latter planning to make a formal response in coming weeks.

Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk said Brisbane City Council – the most heavily-populated local government area affected by the January 2011 floods – would also implement all relevant recommendations.

The most important and costly would be the comprehensive new flood study of the Brisbane River catchment, which the council has begun

The 650-page document calls on the CMC to investigate charging three flood engineers, John Tibaldi, Rob Ayre and Terry Malone, in charge of Wivenhoe dam at the height of the floods.

The CMC has been asked to review the three engineers’ conduct in the preparation of documents surrounding the January 2011 flood, including a brief to then-minister Stephen Robertson, an official flood event report completed last March, and the statements they provided to the inquiry.

The body has also been asked to look at the oral testimony the men gave to the flood inquiry, considering potential offences against the Criminal Code and/or official misconduct under the Crime and Misconduct Act “committed by any, or all, of them”.

Ms Bligh said she had referred the matter to the CMC this morning.

Court of Appeal judge Catherine Holmes, who headed the inquiry, did not take questions from the media as she handed over the final report to Ms Bligh this morning.

But in her report, she says the floods of 2010/11 “took a state more accustomed to drought by surpise” but governments were generally “able to provide a prompt, if not perfect, response”, although there was a good deal of room for improvement.

She says the flooding in Ipswich and Brisbane could have been reduced to some degree if the dam level was reduced to 75 per cent of its drinking water capacity before the December rains, “but to appreciate what the magnitude of the rain would be and that it would fall in the dam area would have required a more than human capacity of prediction”.

“What is concerning, though, is the apparent inertia of government when the possibility [of pre-emptively lowering the dam level] was raised [in late 2010],” the report says.

“The commission has found non-compliance with the manual under which the dam was to be operated. What should not be overlooked is that the manual itself was ambiguous, unclear and difficult to use, and was not based on the best, most current research and information.

“The commission has made a number of recommendations to ensure its thorough review, including of the operating strategies contained in it, based on comprehensive scientific investigations and modelling.”

The dam manual breached

Hearings were reconvened early this year, on the eve of the inquiry’s original reporting deadline, after stories in The Australian questioned whether flood engineers’ testimony over the activation of a particular water release strategy matched up with contemporaneous records.

The inquiry has found the flood engineers retrospectively concluded when they must have moved to certain release strategies, rather than tell a true account of what decisions were made when.

Today’s flood report says none of the contemporaneous documents supports the contention that the flood engineers began operating under the W3 water release strategy at 8am on Saturday, January 2011, as claimed by Seqwater.

A briefing note provided to then natural resources minister Mr Robertson on January 16, three days after the Brisbane River flood peak, included different information about when various water release strategies were believed to have been activated.

The flood report says documents prepared immediately after the flood peak, including the brief for the minister, were not based on engineers’ recollections of when strategies were activated, despite the recent nature of the event.

“Instead, in each case there was a reconstruction, none tallying with what was eventually to be represented as the definitive account, the March flood event report,” the inquiry report says.

“In no case did the document prepared give any hint that it was a reconstruction rather than the product of memory or contemporary record.

“The conclusion must be that at least the three flood engineers involved in their creation did not themselves have a clear understanding of what strategies were adopted and when, or have any confidence that the other flood engineers did.”

Mr Tibaldi took the lead role in writing the March 2011 Seqwater report on the flood events which made assertions about when specific water release strategies, from W1 to W4, were activated, but he had input from the other flood engineers.

The flood inquiry has criticised Mr Tibaldi, saying the report did not satisfy the requirements of the dam manual to produce an accurate report of the procedures used during the event.

“Mr Tibaldi said he believed he was creating an account of what actually happened,” the inquiry report says.

“As will become evident, his reasoning process was inherently flawed: it started from the assumption that the flood engineers complied with the manual, and then worked back to ascertain what strategy transitions must have occurred to be consistent with that assumption; rather than setting out what did, in fact, occur, and then allowing conclusions to be drawn as to whether there was compliance with the manual.”

The Brisbane River flood peak occurred in the city on the morning of Thursday, January 13. The inquiry found Wivenhoe Dam was operated in breach of the manual from 8am on Saturday, January 8, 2011, until the evening of January 9.

The commission has pointed to “strong contemporaneous evidence” that the dam was not operated during this time in the W3 water release strategy, which prioritises the protection of downstream urban areas from flooding.

The inquiry report says on the morning of January 8, Mr Ayre “made conscious change” to the strategy that had been in place when he took over his shift: W1, which allows lower water releases with the aim of protecting rural life including low-lying downstream bridges.

The report says the commission heard arguments that the flood engineers were highly experienced and knew the contents of the dam manual and therefore “must have known at all times” what strategy he was operating the dam in, but in fact there was uncertainty about the timing and detail of strategy changes.

“In short, the flood engineers should easily have been able to say, on this topic so integral to their role, with familiarity with the strategies so inculcated in them, which strategies they had operated the dam in on any given day...”

Apart from the CMC referral, the commission has also called on Seqwater to ensure “proper support and oversight mechanisms” are put in place to ensure flood event reports are drafted accurately.

This could include ensuring the recollections of flood engineers and other parties are recorded immediately after the event, perhaps by engaging an external party to interview them.

Brisbane River catchment flood study: priority

Ms Bligh promised $40 million from the existing Local Government Grants and Subsidies Program over the next three years would go into helping councils implement recommendations in the inquiry report.

The report recommends the Brisbane City Council, Ipswich City Council and Somerset Regional Council - along with the state government - complete a flood study of the entire Brisbane River catchment as quickly as possible.

The commission finds Ipswich City Council may need to complete extra work on hydraulic modelling of the Bremer River.

The Ipswich City Council needs to establish as soon as possible whether the flood mapping, provided by Brisbane City Council, is sufficient for flood management, according to the report.

But the report finds it is not viable to use levees within the Brisbane city as recommended by the Brisbane City Council. But levees may be a feasible solution to protect cold stores at the Brisbane Markets, the wholesale fruit and vegetable supplier, in Rocklea that was inundated during the floods.

It also finds Brisbane City Council and the state government need to tighten the planning scheme to protect ferry terminals after 24 CityCat and ferry terminals were damaged in the January 2011 flood.

All bridges between Brisbane and Ipswich should be subject to immediate "flood suitability" testing, it finds.

It specifically asks for advice on the future of Colleges Crossing.

"The Department of Main Roads, in conjunction with Brisbane City Council and Somerset Regional Council should investigate options for the upgrade of Brisbane River crossings between Wivenhoe Dam and Colleges Crossing and undertake a cost benefit analysis of these to determine the outcome which best serves the public interest."

Justice Holmes said Queensland authorities were caught short after years of drought.

"As to how the floods were managed, there is no doubt that they took a state more accustomed to drought by surprise."

However she said governments at all levels "were able to provide a prompt, if not perfect response", which compared favourably to the "apparent paralysis" in the United States after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.

Premier handed report

Ms Bligh thanked the commission for the report, saying “these are very important events in the life of our state’’.

‘‘I look forward to reading it and making some comments on it later, but I do sincerely on behalf of the people of Queensland thank you and all of your team at the commission,’’ Ms Bligh told the commissioner.

‘‘These are very important events in the life of our state.

‘‘The documents, I hope, will stand up to scrutiny and will be as I expect them to be - rigorously, intensively researched and provide us with a blueprint.’’

‘‘Thank you for providing them to me in the time frame you’ve committed to.’’

Ms Bligh later told reporters that Queenslanders could have confidence the inquiry did what it was required to do - leave no stone unturned, test evidence, cover a broad range of topics and find ways to improve for the future.

The inquiry early this year sought extra time to look into allegations it may have been misled about the way Wivenhoe Dam was managed during the flood crisis, prompting Ms Bligh to announce a delay to council elections to allow the state election to occur on March 24 - after the report's release.

The new hearings focused on claims dam engineers may have mishandled water releases and compounded the flooding that hit Ipswich and Brisbane in January last year.

The inquiry faced questions over why it did not pick up the matter without media prompting, and also endured controversy with Justice Holmes sidelining one of her deputy commissioners over conflict of interest claims raised in The Courier-Mail early this year.

Justice Holmes used the preface to the final report to hit back at criticism over why it had to sit again to properly test the accuracy of the earlier sworn evidence from the flood engineers, saying the inquiry's main focus was to make recommendations for improvements for the future.

"Not all of the criticism was fair, or acknowledged the pressures under which the commission was operating, in endeavouring to cover all of its terms of reference in a limited time," she says.

"It would have been quite impracticable for the commission to take all the evidence given on oath before it and check it for inconsistency against the mountain of documents received. Time simply did not allow that."

- with Tony Moore, Marissa Calligeros, Bridie Jabour and AAP

108 comments so far

Remember the spirit of the floods, the mud army etc?I appeal to all those affected to NOT let a bunch of ambulance chasers turn this into a big fat payday for themselves, trading on your misfortune.

Commenter

null

Location

Brisbane

Date and time

March 16, 2012, 11:10AM

Well said!

Commenter

Pie Thrower

Date and time

March 16, 2012, 11:47AM

@null, hear, hear!!

After this witch hunt, who on earth would want to be an engineer? I reckon the engineering community should just walk away from managing dams in disgust at the way they have been treated by this government, the lawyers who had all the time in the world to nit pick and the ingrates who are baying for blood.

If the engineers walked away from SEQWater, maybe community representatives from Ipswich, Rocklea and Yeronga could take their jobs. Then they'll only have themselves to blame when the next big flood comes (and it will).

Commenter

Craig

Location

Moorooka

Date and time

March 16, 2012, 12:00PM

The buck stops with Bligh. But rather than taking the responsibility that she should, she has pushed three engineers under the bus. Not only that, she has held them down while they got creamed. For shame. Bligh - you are a blight on Queensland an objectionable politician. But don't worry, there is a bus coming for you on 24 March.

Commenter

Disgusted with this government

Location

The Gap

Date and time

March 16, 2012, 12:09PM

Here we go again. truck loads of money now to be poured into the legal fight. Three poor engineers who will be made the scapegoats and sent broke by Anna's Bliar's witch hunt. Anna Bliar to defelect her responsibilty in the matter. She has got to go: Look at the poor nurses who got dudded by the pay scheme - no compensation there. Look at all the people who are suffering with the increase in water rates, power rates, motor vehicle registrations; no compensation there and Anna Bliar deflecting it away. What a useless labour government this is

Commenter

The Voter

Location

Brisbane

Date and time

March 16, 2012, 12:20PM

@disgusted with this government - I find your comments repugnant! You may not like the current government but I haven't seen any evidence that Bligh has "pushed" anyone under a bus. These guys appear to have acted within their job responsibilities and unfortunately for them got it wrong. What is very wrong is that they tried to cover it up. They are not government people, just people doing their jobs. Your comment about a bus coming for the Premier of our state is disgusting. While it appears things could have been better managed hindsight is a wonderful tool and as a nation we have to stop looking to blame others everytime something goes wrong in our lives. As per the first comment I implore those impacted not to move forwards with a class action which will only impact all Queenslanders if successful. Any money won has to come from somewhere and it will be out of the pockets of all of us! I want to know if they are successful whether they are going to give back the donations they took from the Premiers Fund because while I'm happy to help I don't see why they should get my money twice.

Commenter

aussie_girl62

Location

Brisbane

Date and time

March 16, 2012, 12:25PM

How about some compensation when the insurance companies walked out on us?

Commenter

Wiegs

Location

Yeronga

Date and time

March 16, 2012, 12:36PM

@Disgusted: what did Bligh do wrong? What "buck" are you talking about? It was a flood for goodness sake, an act of nature. If you want to talk about pushing people under the bus, look at the LNP and the media for being desperate for somebody other than the planet earth to blame.

No doubt the government was happy with the job the engineers did, but the media pushed and wouldn't let go of every little inconsistency until there was no choice but to launch an enquiry. If you want to blame anybody, blame those who weren't happy accepting that sh*t happens.

Commenter

Ben

Location

Brisbane

Date and time

March 16, 2012, 12:48PM

It was a flood, it's not Bligh's fault. This is what the climate change movement is all about, trying to prevent more disasters just like this.

17 Mar
THREE engineers who operated Queensland's main flood mitigation dam system are to be investigated by the state's Crime and Misconduct Commission following recommendations from the long-awaited official inquiry into last year's catastrophic floods.

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